


Run

by Cradlerobin



Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst and Feels, Falling In Love, M/M, Unrequited Love, Watching your best friend slowly slip away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 11:40:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5332832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cradlerobin/pseuds/Cradlerobin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bart's story of revenge and falling in love "And Jaime barely had the strength to move, but he conceived the strength to protest and even though Bart had seen it with his own eyes, lived it in his own skin, he wanted nothing more than to drown in the sincerity gleaming in the boys black-brown eyes." Originally posted on FF.net in 2013</p>
            </blockquote>





	Run

**Author's Note:**

> So we lay in the dark,  
> Cause we've got nothing to say.  
> Just the beating of hearts,  
> Like two drums in the grey.  
> I don't know what we're doing,  
> I don't know what we've done.  
> But the fire is coming,  
> So I think we should run.  
> \- Run by Daughter

Bart remembers the nerve racking anxiety he had when he met Blue Beetle, no Jaime, for the first time. He had to fight against the urge to run away so badly, running away was instinct and instincts kept you alive where he was from. 

But in this time, running away from a teammate was frowned upon so he stayed in character, smiling so hard his cheeks hurt as Tim Drake introduced him to the dark hunch-shouldered boy, currently mumbling to himself. Bart had thought it was so strange that he wasn’t more than a couple inches taller than him, the Blue Beetle of his past, their future, was a looming figure ever present and ever terrifying. 

This Blue Beetle just nodded at him with a small smile, saying something about ‘welcome’ and ‘ese’. Which Bart was certain he hadn’t heard when studying slang from this era with Nathaniel, but he smiled his cheek splitting smile and hid his shaking hands in his pockets. 

The next time he saw Blue Beetle the confrontation was planned, a simple scavenging of his food Bart’s certain would earn him a conversation, still he consciously worked to hide the fear on his face when Blue Beetle pulls him aside roughly. Bart allowed the character to take hold, speaking quickly and gesturing wildly, the way Wally used to in all those old newsfeeds he found. He forced himself to put an arm around Blue Beetle, fighting against his own repulsion as he led him out of the grotto full of spirits.

But Blue Beetle was nothing like he expected, the annoyance he showed at the Cave was less directed towards him and more on the subject matter of mentors. Once away from it, Blue Beetle brightened, and even bought Bart another bag of Chicken Whizzies. For which he was grateful, a lifetime of never being full made his stomach feel bottomless empty, even in this time of abundance. 

He discovered that Blue Beetle, Jaime Reyes as he reminds him, is serious but not stern. More worried than anything else, and he has a lot to worry about. A family that he’s close to, but doesn’t know his superhero identity- a concept Bart still struggled with. In the future you advertised the strengths you had, even ones you didn’t for the sake of safety, hoping to avoid confrontations when you could. 

And Blue Beetle has to go to school along with being a hero, another thing Bart is unfamiliar with, still he bemoaned the institution as everyone he studied in his books had. Bart would give anything for the chance to learn about things from someone who knew more than he did, and not from words on pages he didn’t always understand or from old legends that could hardly be trusted. The Garricks planned on enrolling him soon enough however, and though internally elated, Bart wondered if it won’t interfere with the plan. 

The Plan as Bart thought of it was to find Blue Beetle and kill him, but he always had his doubts about his own capacity to do it. He came from a long line of heroes and had learned about heroes his entire life and was surrounded by heroes now. Above all else heroes did not kill. So even though Blue Beetle trusts him enough to be alone with him, unprotected, he doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity. 

Instead he asked everything he could about him. Hoping that his fake speedster voice and his fake speedster smile and his fake speedster mannerisms, are enough to divert suspicion that he’s anything but a curious fast talking speedster. Blue Beetle seemed surprised by the attention, and Bart noticed it’s because he doesn’t speak much to the rest of the Team, he’s the newest addition, aside from Bart, and he spends quite a bit of time alone. 

Bart continued to observe him after that first interaction, watching as he mutters to himself and others avoid looking at him directly. Bart already knows that the scarab was speaking to him, as the history books reported, but he doesn’t let on; after all he’s nothing more than a stranded tourist. Still he kept watch Blue Beetle struggle to fight the scarab attached to his spine, with no one showing any real concern for what he’s battling. 

Forgive the unobservant heroes, Bart tried to remind himself; they have other missions, other teammates, problems of their own that are presently more pressing than the lonely newcomer muttering to himself. But he doesn’t want to forgive them, Bart doesn’t care about their problems or most of the Team; he cares about his future and preventing it, and right now that means saving this boy. In his anger he finds himself in El Paso, Texas knocking on a large wooden door, using that notorious Impulse impatience to cover the nerves that are settling in the bottom of his stomach. 

Bart rushes through his words faster than usual as he registers the anxiety on Blue Beetle’s face, again about secret identities. Bart wants to question him again, but when Bart watches him look cautiously back inside and he sees the warm glow of life inside and smells the beginnings of a home cooked meal before Blue Beetle closes the door behind him, he begins to get an idea of why he’s so concerned.

He runs, feeling Blue Beetle flying at his heels, but surprisingly it doesn’t give him the chills it did when Blue Beetle impending figure flew above him in the past; his body doesn’t sense any danger and he runs not because he has to but because Blue Beetle’s-Jaime’s echoing laughter makes him want to. 

He feels himself smile as Blue Beetle works to impress him, not the ear to ear Wally grin he practiced, but a genuine smile he hasn’t felt since he really ran for the first time when he was a little boy and his Dad could still teach him. He hears himself open up about his past, a miniscule hiccup that wouldn’t really mean anything to anyone, but means something to him as he proves to both Blue Beetle and himself that it’s better to create than destroy.

It’s all a blur after that; such a speedster thing for him to think he almost laughs; a blur of a quick battle, a blur of the cave, a blur of a fight, a blur of familiar electricity; then a blur of new pain, so much like the old pain, but unbearably worse; like inhibitor collars wrapped around every inch of his body. Sudden sharp relief as Miss Martian saves him and next the heightened panic in his throat so heavy he can’t swallow around it. 

Because he has to save Blue, he has to save Jaime; for them, for himself, for Jaime. 

After blurring and whirring around for what seems like forever to his quickened cognition and to the building weight in the center of his chest, he finds him. He swells with it, like the breath after being underwater, he can’t stand the intense range of emotions he just felt because of Blue Beetle- no because of this tawny colored boy who’s so weak once out of the pod that he can’t stand without Bart holding him up.

He’s full to the brim, he bursts at the seams with the knowledge he’s been hiding and avoiding and screaming in terror of in the middle in the night, long after the Garricks have fallen asleep. The truths out of his mouth before he even has a chance to regret it, but he doesn’t anyway.

And Jaime barely has the strength to move, but he conceives the strength to protest and even though Bart has seen it with his own eyes, lived it in his own skin, he wants nothing more than to drown in the sincerity gleaming in the boys black-brown eyes. He carries him as far as he can, then a little more, but Jaime stays on the Reach ship to give them all a chance to get out. And then there’s shouting to leave, but Jaime’s not back, he runs to get him. But a mass of water knocked him out and all he sees is black. 

He wakes up a minute later, Garfield Logan hovering over him and he feels the knot of anxiety reform in his throat and a punch of fear to his gut and tears welling in his eyes before he can even begin to sputter at high speeds about Blue. He chokes on his words and turns onto his side, his body threatening to go fetal as his mind reels back to the world covered in dark gray clouds, raining ash. 

But there’s Blue, knocked out in one of the seats on the bioship, and he’s certain it’s the same boy because he had never seen Blue Beetle close his eyes like that, never seen him be in an open state of vulnerability. He’s barely blinked before he’s right at his side, relishing in the sweet relief of knowing that Jaime is alive and himself and the world hasn’t ended and the Reach hasn’t won; at least not yet. 

But he stops that thought in it’s tracks when he sees Jaime shakily inhale and shift; beginning to wake. He monitors him and, poor Jaime worried as ever, wakes with a start telling him that it’s him, really him, and Bart can’t help but smile, the real smile he can only muster when he’s with Jaime, and reassures him that of course it’s him, it can’t be anyone else and it never will be. 

Bart doesn’t have to force his smiles with Jaime at all anymore, they come to him easily as he comes over and eats all his food- the pangs in his stomach finally starting to quell after months of steady food from the Team, the Garricks and Jaime-, as easily as he met his parents and his sweet little sister that grins gap tooth grins and pokes fun at Jaime. They don’t come so easily when they walked his streets in the orange setting of the Texas sun. Little groups of boys are always there, sitting on stoops and straddling bikes, and they whispered to each other and sometimes shout to Jaime. 

Things like ‘maricon’ and ‘pato’ that Jaime shrugs off and won’t tell Bart the meaning of- but Bart doesn’t need a translation for the ‘faggot’ they sneer in his direction. He worries he may be causing Jaime more trouble than he’s worth; he knows his family doesn’t know about him being El Paso’s very own hero and, though his parents don’t seem suspicious, his sister jokes that he must have found the only white boy in town. He knows that Jaime isn’t doing well in school because his parents remind him daily to go to sleep early so they won’t get more reports of him dozing off in class, Jaime nods as he walk him to the door and Bart knows he’s about to go out on patrol anyways. 

Still Bart doesn’t think he can last a day without seeing Jaime; at least he hasn’t tried since the therapy sessions they had to sit through and the look of fear on Jaime’s face when he thought Bart had told the JL about the monster he’s supposed to become. He promises Jaime he won’t tell anyone, he wasn’t even supposed to tell Jaime in the first place.

But then Jaime tells the League and Bart starts to fret about his own effect on this past. Time-travel research had been in it’s early stages when the Reach decided to start harvesting; so he has little to go on aside from theories from long dead scientists and his own anxiety- ridden instincts. 

But even with those instincts on high alert, he doesn’t know what he’d do if he had to give up the runs out to the dessert on slow crime nights in El Paso, or video games he doesn’t really know how to play, but button smashes his way to victory anyways, or the air of El Paso in the late afternoon: the lingering smell of barbecue and hot asphalt with heat waves rising off of it. 

He doesn’t know what he’d do without Jaime’s exasperated smiles or the sound of him laughing till it hurts or the color of his eyes when the sunlight hits them just right or the frustrated mutterings of Spanish phrases and asides to the scarab. Sometimes he wonders if he could just run far enough away from the future, and if he could carry Jaime with him. Sometimes he gets the urge to try. 

He knows Jaime worries, knew it from the moment he met him, but he had added the entire world to the mountain on his shoulders. Bart always says that together they can manage the weight, between the two of them the world won’t end and they’ll be happy and there will always be Chicken Whizzies. But he knows when Jaime stays silent for too long and stares at nothing, when Jaime’s laugh fades on a sour note, when Jaime just looks at his family without saying a word; he knows that all Jaime can see is the future Bart promised him. 

That’s why when he finds Green Beetle probing at his best friends back, he shouldn’t be surprised. Jaime would do anything to save the world- had already suffered a great amount of pain in an attempt- because he’s just that kind of hero, the kind that expects nothing in return, but is willing to give everything he has and more, to save generations he’d probably never meet. Jaime is that sincere, that selfless, and it’s what made Bart trust him. What makes Bart love him. 

He has swirled that idea around in his head, trying to get a taste for when it happened and never finding the answer. It was definitely never part of the plan, but he couldn’t have really planned for Jaime. He certainly doesn’t plan for the last month; where he sees less and less of Jaime. Bart writes it off on Jaime having found his lost friend and tries not to feel jealous about suddenly sharing Jaime. He has always had to share Jaime; with the Team, with his family, with his city, but the burn never ebbs. 

When he does hang out with Jaime, it’s the same and somehow different; like the shortening breaths leading up to suffocation. Jaime smiles the same, but his eyes tighten in an ugly, foreign way; Jaime laughs the same, but the edge of it is sharp and cold like the edge of a knife; Jaime’s eyes never catch the light now. He wonders if his mind is playing tricks on him, if this was how his paranoid and psychotic instincts handle love; making him see dark shadows where there are none, so he wouldn’t hurt too bad from the loss of him. Bart refuses to lose Jaime, he won’t allow the Reach or the future or his mind to take Jaime away from him, no matter the cost. 

But when he opens his eyes in a Reach pod once more, with a splitting pain at the back of his head, and Jaime- no Blue Beetle- grinning sickly at him from the outside; he regrets not trying to carry Jaime with all his strength and running when he had the chance.


End file.
